The Irish Lover (10 page)

“Gentlemen, you’re very welcome to Glenncailty
Castle. We’re looking forward to hearing you perform tomorrow
night.” The look on her face said she’d heard some of their
conversation, and her small smile twitched with amusement. “I’m
Sorcha, guest relations manager here, and I’ll be helping you check
in.”

She gestured to the left side of the foyer,
where a long reception desk waited. The foyer was almost square,
with a massive wood staircase opposite the double entrance doors.
The floor was black and white stone—not tile, Tim noticed, but
honest black and white stone—set in a check pattern, dull from
three hundred years of feet. The walls were mint green above the
waist-high paneling and the furniture heavy, dark wood. Wheeling
his bag behind him, fiddle case under his arm, Tim followed Paddy
and Sorcha to the registration desk, where an ethereally pretty
blonde with an accent he couldn’t place helped him. There was no
massive counter or huge computer terminal, just a laptop and a
printer somewhere under the desk. When he’d answered her questions
and signed the needed forms, she opened a drawer to hand him a gold
key. An actual metal key.

“Never seen a key before?” Paddy elbowed him in
the ribs.

Tim tossed it in his hand. “Never gotten one
from a hotel.”

Sorcha came around from behind the desk. “I’ll
show you to your rooms and then we can go on a tour if you feel up
to it. Otherwise you can rest before having dinner. Mr. Wilcox, I
know you’ve come a long way.”

“We already saw some of your beautiful castle.”
Paddy was laying it on thick. “Tim was worried for his fiddle, so
we went first to the barn.”

“So you’ve seen Finn’s Stable? It’s a beautiful
venue, and its reputation for live music and performances has grown
over the past year. That’s one of the reasons we’re excited to have
Free Birds Fly come to our glen.”

“It’s the nicest castle I’ve ever been in,” Tim
said, taking another look around the foyer.

The redhead laughed. “Thank you. As you may
have guessed, it’s not a true castle in the medieval sense—for that
you’d need Trim or Bunratty. Glenncailty was originally a large,
fortified manor. The people in Cailtytown and the other villages in
the glen have always called this Glenncailty Castle, and there are
many stories as to how it came to be known that way. It was a
private residence until a few years ago. It’s currently owned by
the O’Muircheartaigh family. “

Tim looked at the simple brochure he’d been
given along with his key. The name of the family that owned it had
caught his eye because it seemed unpronounceable.

“Wait, this name, spelled like this, is
pronounced O-were-hurtie?” Tim frowned at the brochure, sure that
wasn’t right.

“Yes.” Sorcha took them through a doorway
opposite the registration desk. A wood-paneled hall stretched from
the foyer to the far wall of the main building.

“How…?” Tim was staring at the name in
bewilderment.

“That’s Irish for you.” Paddy laughed. The
sound of their luggage wheels quieted as they went from stone to
carpet.

“So this is a traditional Gaelic
name?”

“You Americans.” Paddy shook his
head.

“What did I say?”

“Gaelic isn’t a language.” Sorcha looked over
her should and smiled softly. They passed a recess with a door that
said simply The Restaurant at Glenncailty. “Gaelic is a group of
languages, same as the Germanic or Romance languages. It includes
Irish, Welsh, Scotts-Gaelic, Manx and a few others.”

“Oh.” Tim blinked. “I had no idea. I thought it
was Gaelic, sorry.”

“Everyone seems to, but the language is Irish.
It’s the official language of the Republic, and everyone takes
Irish in school.”

“Is that why all the street signs are in
English and, uh, Irish?”

“Yes.” Sorcha cleared her throat slightly, then
went into tour-guide mode. “If you consult your map, you’ll see
that we’re passing through a hall that runs from the foyer to the
east wall. This half of the main floor contains our restaurant,
which is fine dining at its best, and also the breakfast room,
which you access from the foyer.”

At the end of the hall was another large wood
door, though this one didn’t look like it was one hundred years
old, as all the other doors he’d seen so far had.

“This door leads to the east wing.” Sorcha
opened it and motioned them through. “Architectural historians have
dated the detached east and west wings to within fifty years of
construction of the main building. The covered halls, one of which
you’ve just entered, were added later, and as part of the remodel
they were repaired and updated.”

On the other side of the door was a short stone
hall. Large windows provided a view of the grounds in the front of
the castle, which were a tumble of wild roses and thick underbrush
with heavy, evenly spaced trees lining the curved drive that
touched the entrance doors. On the other side of the hall, matching
windows offered a view of more wild plants, which partially
obscured an annex that jutted off the side of the main castle.
Straight in front of them was a second massive stone building. Rain
dripped down the windows, and the sunlight that had been present
when they first entered the building was gone, abandoning the sky
to the fat, dark rainclouds.

“What’s that?” Paddy asked, pointing out the
windows towards the rear of the castle at the annex.

Sorcha winced. “It’s the kitchens. As you can
see, the kitchens were built new for the hotel and attached to the
restaurant via one of the exterior walls. No part of the main
building could be reworked into a restaurant grade kitchen, so we
had to add that space.”

“It’s a pity.” Paddy shook his head.

“It is.” Sorcha paused and frowned. “And it
blocked the view of the rear of the castle from these windows. The
gardens are beautiful—walled and laid out in a formal
way.”

Tim had no idea what Paddy thought was a pity.
His confusion must have shown on his face, because Paddy said,
“It’s a shame when they add things like this. Modern things to old
buildings.”

“But a hotel needs a kitchen.” Tim was most
definitely a lover of all vintage items, especially old music, but
he didn’t understand their distress.

“In Ireland we’re very protective of our old
homes, actually any architecture at all.” Sorcha started walking
again.

“That’s fair. I mean, just this building is
older than the U.S. as a nation.”

Paddy and Sorcha stopped, turned and looked at
him. Paddy shook his head and Sorcha’s smile was full of
pity.

“That’s a sad thing. I’d never thought of it
that way before.” Paddy patted his shoulder.

“It’s not sad,” Tim said with a flash of
star-spangled pride.

“Ah, sure it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Gentlemen, if I may direct your attention.”
With Sorcha’s herding, they passed out of the hall into the east
wing, which they’d seen looming over them through the rain-sheeted
windows. The foyer for this wing was tiny compared to what they’d
come through, with an elevator and several doors taking up most of
the wall space. It might have been any modern hotel, except for the
exposed stone exterior wall they’d just passed through, which
seeped cold. “The elevator or stairs just here will take you to
your rooms, on the second floor. There are nine rooms in this wing.
All the performers save one who has family in Trim are staying
there. The production crew is in the west wing.

“Through the door here—” Sorcha gestured to a
wood door with a textured glass window, “—is the Pub. It’s always
good crack, and you won’t be the only musicians, I’d
say.”

Tim rocked back on his heels as he ran his
tongue over his teeth. “I, uh, don’t usually partake in
crack—alcohol is my vice.” He smiled to cover his discomfort at
hearing that the class-A felony drugs to be found at the pub were
nice. Damned musician stereotypes. He hoped the hotel hadn’t
stocked his room with hypodermic needles or anything strange. And
he’d always considered Ireland a rather conservative country. Today
was just full of surprises.

Paddy and Sorcha were looking at him
again.

Paddy patted him on the back. “Tell me now,
Yank, did I seem as great a fool when I came to
America?”

Tim just sighed. They were all three speaking
English, weren’t they?

“That’s no way to treat a guest,” Sorcha
scolded her countryman. “Tim, crack is spelled C-R-A-I-C. It’s the
Irish word for a good time, for fun.”

“Is there a dictionary or something I can get?”
Tim felt a little desperate.

“No need—by the time you leave next week, we’ll
have you speaking like a proper Irishman.” Sorcha hit the button
for the elevator and turned to leave.

“Sure, you’re going to walk us up,” Paddy said,
smiling at the redhead.

She leveled a look at him but returned the
smile. “Of course.”

They piled into the elevator. When they got off
on the second floor bits of music filled the hall. He heard the
first strains of what he thought might be “Curragh of Kildare” on
guitar, the rhythmic thump of a traditional Irish drum, the tinny
sound of an Irish tin whistle and discordant layers of string
instruments, including guitar, tenor banjo and something he thought
might be a bouzouki.

“I get why we’re above the pub,” Tim said as
Sorcha led them to their rooms.

“Yes, well, if you have any problems with your
room or the noise level, please let us know. You dial zero on
the—”

“No, I’m glad. I need to tune too. I didn’t
think you’d let me do it in the hotel, that’s why I asked Paddy to
take me to the barn.”

“We will ask everyone to quiet down if there
are any complaints.”

“And will you be coming personally?” Paddy
asked with a grin.

Tim shook his head, leaning back against the
wall in the hall to watch his friend make an ass of himself. Jet
lag was rearing its ugly head, and his door was temptingly close,
but he didn’t want to miss this.

“No, sad to say. It would be my night
manager.”

“Pity. Will you be at the concert
tomorrow?”

“I will be.”

“Then I’ll see you after, my lovely Rose of
Tralee,” Paddy swept a dramatic bow and disappeared into his
room.

Tim turned his snort-laugh into a cough. Sorcha
turned her look of resignation on him.

“Ahem, sorry, dust or something in my throat.”
Tim pushed away from the wall, the muscles in his face protesting
from exhaustion when he smiled.

“We didn’t complete our tour of the castle, but
I suspect you’ll want your bed or some food.” She crossed her arms.
“And while you’re here I hope you meet some proper Irish
gentlemen.”

“I’ll make a point of it,” Tim said with all
the mock seriousness he could muster.

Sorcha lapsed back into her professional
customer-service face. “Please let the front desk know if there’s
anything you need. In the hotel, your options for dinner are the
pub, which I pointed out to you, or the main restaurant, which is
quieter.”

“Thank you.” Tim opened the door with the
brass-colored key. “Actually, I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“There was a woman playing a harp. In Finn’s
Stable.”

“Of course.” Sorcha nodded, smiled and turned
away.

“Wait.” Damn, Paddy had not been kidding about
Irish women. “Who is she? What’s her name?”

Sorcha looked him up and down. Her body
language changed as she did it, her straight posture softening, her
hands not folded in front of her but tapping restlessly on her
thigh. She was no longer a hotel professional, but a beautiful,
touchable woman. Any other time Tim would have felt something for
her, but either jet lag or the dark-haired women had stolen his
desire. And if he really thought that one song and a few words
between him and the beautiful woman had robbed him of his ability
to be attracted to anyone else, he needed to stop playing and
listening to melancholy, romantic folk songs, because he was losing
touch with reality.

“Caera Cassidy. She’s our special events
coordinator. She arranged all of this.”

“That’s Caera?” Tim had seen her name on all
the emails about the event. He’d never imagined she was so
beautiful, or young.

“Yes.”

“She’s younger than I thought.” That was an
understatement. Usually booking managers were a bit younger, but
venue managers were older, with years of experience.

“She’s very special, is Caera. Careful
there.”

As Sorcha walked away, Tim wondered if she was
warning him to be careful because Caera could hurt him, or he could
hurt her.

****

After half an hour lying on the bed, bone-weary
but not tired—despite the fact that he’d spent the past ten hours
traveling to Dublin from New York via London, plus two hours in the
car with Paddy—Tim gave up the hope of a nap and sat up.

Digging into his bag, he took a few aspirin and
gulped down water. The clashing sounds of tuning instruments and
discordant bits of song were making his lingering headache worse,
so he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door, stuffing the key
and castle map in his pocket.